One way people enter this web journal is through a google search of the words chronic fatigue. It must surely be well down on the reading options for this subject material on the Internet, however I can understand the comprehensive search for answers when this condition affects one's life, or the life of a loved one. I therefore take this opportunity to express my own thoughts about the condition of chronic fatigue which may or may not be applicable to the particular reader searching for answers. It's just something to consider.
My husband developed chronic fatigue quite late in his life, in his mid 50s. My brother developed the condition in his 40s. A friend's daughter developed the condition in her late 20s. Mothers have told me of their school children being diagnosed with chronic fatigue. The condition can hit at just about any stage of life. It's important to be aware of this fact and to understand that there are a number of theories devised by medical practitioners. The jury is still very much out about how it develops.
I could make some comments based on observations of what I know about those other people, but the person I am most close to, and who I know more intimately than anyone else in the world is my husband. I am therefore going to narrow down my thinking about chronic fatigue based on what I have observed in him. I'll leave it to the reader to interpret if anything here is worthy of exploration in your own particular case.
My husband had a number of obstacles with which to contend in his early life. He is adamant, and I believe him, that he had a happy childhood. He lost his mother to cancer in his mid teens, a devastating blow, but he did have, in his mind, a happy life with her, his father and his siblings on the farm. There is no question in my mind that she was a most loving mother. I have met no-one who knew her, and I have met many people who knew her, who has not said that she was a wonderful person, an absolute delight of a human being, and that she loved her children most dearly.
However, she had her own challenges on the farm, physical and emotional ones, and there is no doubt that with four children to raise on top of all the other work, some issues relating to her children were likely to be missed. My husband's father had some lovely qualities but he was an anxious person with his own set of personality challenges which meant that as a parent he had some failings. As well, my husband grew up in an era where checks for children were not comprehensive and nor did they really know what to do with children who didn't check all the behavioural boxes. Hence, a difficulty with learning to read together with some distractibility and impulsivity may have induced some concern and anxiety, but intervention was not sought. Add a boarding school situation at a tender age to this mix where bullying of softer, sensitive natures was not only tolerated but almost encouraged, and you have the hallmarks of anxiety in the making.
In spite of personal challenges, my husband had/has unstoppable determination to succeed. He went to university and completed a Bachelor degree, started a Masters until he was offered a position he couldn't refuse, and in later life went on to obtain an MBA at our city's most prestigious university. He's no dummy. He held a very high position in his field of choice in the USA and thereafter pursued and ran/runs his own businesses back in Australia.
However, short of some sort of huge major financial success in his life I don't think it is likely that he will ever stop feeling that he has underachieved. He continually carries with him a sense that he could have done better and could have achieved more. The cocktail of an anxious person with a perfectionist state of mind is a dangerous mix. I don't see it as a co-incidence that immediately prior to being diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue that he had been through a particularly anxious and stress induced year where he had missed hundreds of hours of sleep.
My husband hates labels and I accept that they are confining and limiting, but if one had to use a label, do the characteristics of 'Attention Deficit Disorder' mean something to you?
Are you thought of as distractable; someone who can focus on something you enjoy for long periods of time, but who doesn't focus much at all on the aspects of life that don't sustain your interest or attention? Do you, or did you have some difficulty with learning to read, causing you considerable hardship during your childhood? Do you feel that you are underachieving based on your understanding of your abilities? Are you inclined to be impulsive? Do you blurt out hurtful things to your spouse or children or co-workers, but you didn't mean to hurt them? Do you find yourself saying sorry a lot because in time you can see that you have hurt people? Is it kinda hard for you to wait your turn, or to allow someone to finish talking because you so want to express further your own point of view?
Think about living with these characteristics minute by minute. I know personally that living with someone with these behaviours is not without its challenges, and I am sure it is sometimes hard to live in your own skin if you have ADD, or ADHD. Chances are high the person in question is tense a good deal of the time; that life may be more complicated day by day than for the person who does not have to contend with these challenges. Perhaps the need to achieve tasks to their satisfaction takes longer than it does the person who does not have these characteristics, keeping the person up late. Perhaps, some innate understanding that dopamine is much higher when a person gets no sleep means that they pull an 'all nighter' every now and again when another person would rather almost anything else than to have to stay awake all night.
Now, imagine that things start to fall apart in some way in your life; perhaps you hit an emotional brick wall. It could be a career disappointment, or a financial decision made impulsively, or a spouse who struggles with the sense of loneliness in the marriage or chaos in the management of life, or one simply feels inside oneself that life isn't going so well and doesn't have a clue what or why is causing these feelings and outcomes.
Now, have a read of this article. Consider this. There may be a possible link between ADD and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Unsurprisingly to me, some people find that their Chronic Fatigue improves significantly when they are given medication to assist with undiagnosed ADD. In my husband's particular case, he has persistently refused to consider the possibility that he may have ADD. Hence, treating the chronic fatigue in this way was never an option.
Some years later since being diagnosed with chronic fatigue, my husband's condition is more or less cured. So, what did he do? First, he slept a lot. That was the first strategy. His body demanded it. He then stayed on alone at the holiday house for about 10 days and pottered on his own schedule. That helped. He had his vitamins and minerals checked by way of blood tests and had vitamin injections for those vitamins that were low in his body. He continues to monitor himself and takes supplements daily. He supplemented his sodium intake after much personal research and with a sense that he was short of sodium. He ate and eats very well, lots of vegetables and protein. He saw a doctor who understood alternative therapies and this man spent a few hours with him. I think the best piece of information that he gave him was to show him how to relax using a few simple hypnosis and meditation strategies. Bit by bit, the brain fogginess got better; the pain in his legs went. It took a couple of years, but with time he recovered.
The hardest thing has been to convince him that he needs to get regular sleep and regular relatively gentle exercise . I personally think that he is chasing dopamine by staying up late and that this is a self-induced therapy for the ADD, but I'm no doctor. I've just been observing the man for the past 40 something years.
More than anything, I think that my change in approach to him has aided him. I did the following things:
- I keep my beliefs to myself (and by God it feels good to get it out here). He just doesn't want to know much about what I uncover. He'll be happy to live out his life without any sort of official diagnosis of his ADD. Fine. I accept that. I can't change it.
- I have huge respect for him, regardless of his quirks. He is loving. He is loyal. He is good to me, to his children and his wider family. He is hard working. He won't ever let us down. He's a good man and the centre of my life.
- I try now, extremely hard I might add, to not take his outbursts personally. He's going to always talk over me at times, to be annoyed when I disagree with him or express my own views that are contrary to his. He is not going to respond well when he feels overwhelmed or when I express upset, even if that's the slightest change in tone of voice. It's hard for him to contain his emotional state, and since he is more or less forced to do that out in the world, I get that he will emote at home. I might say, 'Why are you shouting at me?' to try to get him to self-correct and to lower his voice, but I've learned to keep a very tight lid on my own emotional state and to take less and less time to get over my internal upset privately.
- After wads of reading on the topic I came to see that it is vital not to tap into such a person's sense of shame or of feeling overwhelmed. People with ADD have weathered many storms of being put down by others in their lives - parents, teachers and spouses all play into this sense of shame. With their high expectations of themselves, and their quirks of nature which make some issues of life difficult, your criticisms of their efforts will be overwhelming for them. They will be hurt and feel misunderstood. It will help nothing and nobody.
- The following strategies are very important: Don't engage in important or difficult conversations late at night. If you need to talk about something important or something you want to achieve that involves their input or decision making, have a face to face conversation at the most opportune time, no distractions or preoccupations. Don't talk about past mistakes. Don't make them feel guilty. Just ask for their assistance to make whatever it is you want or need happen. Be upbeat, co-operative, kind and positive.
In the midst of my husband's illness I read a long paper by a specialist in chronic fatigue. Sorry, right now all I remember is that her first name was Sarah and she lives in the UK. She's treated hundreds of people over decades and the pattern she has identified was that all her patients were Type A. Whether you or your loved one has undiagnosed ADD or not, a consideration of Type A characteristics (and possible anxiety resulting from this personality type), and what that may mean to your health and emotional state isn't a bad place to start your re-evaluation of how you live your life and whether this is making for your chronic fatigue state. I wish you the very best.
My husband developed chronic fatigue quite late in his life, in his mid 50s. My brother developed the condition in his 40s. A friend's daughter developed the condition in her late 20s. Mothers have told me of their school children being diagnosed with chronic fatigue. The condition can hit at just about any stage of life. It's important to be aware of this fact and to understand that there are a number of theories devised by medical practitioners. The jury is still very much out about how it develops.
I could make some comments based on observations of what I know about those other people, but the person I am most close to, and who I know more intimately than anyone else in the world is my husband. I am therefore going to narrow down my thinking about chronic fatigue based on what I have observed in him. I'll leave it to the reader to interpret if anything here is worthy of exploration in your own particular case.
My husband had a number of obstacles with which to contend in his early life. He is adamant, and I believe him, that he had a happy childhood. He lost his mother to cancer in his mid teens, a devastating blow, but he did have, in his mind, a happy life with her, his father and his siblings on the farm. There is no question in my mind that she was a most loving mother. I have met no-one who knew her, and I have met many people who knew her, who has not said that she was a wonderful person, an absolute delight of a human being, and that she loved her children most dearly.
However, she had her own challenges on the farm, physical and emotional ones, and there is no doubt that with four children to raise on top of all the other work, some issues relating to her children were likely to be missed. My husband's father had some lovely qualities but he was an anxious person with his own set of personality challenges which meant that as a parent he had some failings. As well, my husband grew up in an era where checks for children were not comprehensive and nor did they really know what to do with children who didn't check all the behavioural boxes. Hence, a difficulty with learning to read together with some distractibility and impulsivity may have induced some concern and anxiety, but intervention was not sought. Add a boarding school situation at a tender age to this mix where bullying of softer, sensitive natures was not only tolerated but almost encouraged, and you have the hallmarks of anxiety in the making.
In spite of personal challenges, my husband had/has unstoppable determination to succeed. He went to university and completed a Bachelor degree, started a Masters until he was offered a position he couldn't refuse, and in later life went on to obtain an MBA at our city's most prestigious university. He's no dummy. He held a very high position in his field of choice in the USA and thereafter pursued and ran/runs his own businesses back in Australia.
However, short of some sort of huge major financial success in his life I don't think it is likely that he will ever stop feeling that he has underachieved. He continually carries with him a sense that he could have done better and could have achieved more. The cocktail of an anxious person with a perfectionist state of mind is a dangerous mix. I don't see it as a co-incidence that immediately prior to being diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue that he had been through a particularly anxious and stress induced year where he had missed hundreds of hours of sleep.
My husband hates labels and I accept that they are confining and limiting, but if one had to use a label, do the characteristics of 'Attention Deficit Disorder' mean something to you?
Are you thought of as distractable; someone who can focus on something you enjoy for long periods of time, but who doesn't focus much at all on the aspects of life that don't sustain your interest or attention? Do you, or did you have some difficulty with learning to read, causing you considerable hardship during your childhood? Do you feel that you are underachieving based on your understanding of your abilities? Are you inclined to be impulsive? Do you blurt out hurtful things to your spouse or children or co-workers, but you didn't mean to hurt them? Do you find yourself saying sorry a lot because in time you can see that you have hurt people? Is it kinda hard for you to wait your turn, or to allow someone to finish talking because you so want to express further your own point of view?
Think about living with these characteristics minute by minute. I know personally that living with someone with these behaviours is not without its challenges, and I am sure it is sometimes hard to live in your own skin if you have ADD, or ADHD. Chances are high the person in question is tense a good deal of the time; that life may be more complicated day by day than for the person who does not have to contend with these challenges. Perhaps the need to achieve tasks to their satisfaction takes longer than it does the person who does not have these characteristics, keeping the person up late. Perhaps, some innate understanding that dopamine is much higher when a person gets no sleep means that they pull an 'all nighter' every now and again when another person would rather almost anything else than to have to stay awake all night.
Now, imagine that things start to fall apart in some way in your life; perhaps you hit an emotional brick wall. It could be a career disappointment, or a financial decision made impulsively, or a spouse who struggles with the sense of loneliness in the marriage or chaos in the management of life, or one simply feels inside oneself that life isn't going so well and doesn't have a clue what or why is causing these feelings and outcomes.
Now, have a read of this article. Consider this. There may be a possible link between ADD and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Unsurprisingly to me, some people find that their Chronic Fatigue improves significantly when they are given medication to assist with undiagnosed ADD. In my husband's particular case, he has persistently refused to consider the possibility that he may have ADD. Hence, treating the chronic fatigue in this way was never an option.
Some years later since being diagnosed with chronic fatigue, my husband's condition is more or less cured. So, what did he do? First, he slept a lot. That was the first strategy. His body demanded it. He then stayed on alone at the holiday house for about 10 days and pottered on his own schedule. That helped. He had his vitamins and minerals checked by way of blood tests and had vitamin injections for those vitamins that were low in his body. He continues to monitor himself and takes supplements daily. He supplemented his sodium intake after much personal research and with a sense that he was short of sodium. He ate and eats very well, lots of vegetables and protein. He saw a doctor who understood alternative therapies and this man spent a few hours with him. I think the best piece of information that he gave him was to show him how to relax using a few simple hypnosis and meditation strategies. Bit by bit, the brain fogginess got better; the pain in his legs went. It took a couple of years, but with time he recovered.
The hardest thing has been to convince him that he needs to get regular sleep and regular relatively gentle exercise . I personally think that he is chasing dopamine by staying up late and that this is a self-induced therapy for the ADD, but I'm no doctor. I've just been observing the man for the past 40 something years.
More than anything, I think that my change in approach to him has aided him. I did the following things:
- I keep my beliefs to myself (and by God it feels good to get it out here). He just doesn't want to know much about what I uncover. He'll be happy to live out his life without any sort of official diagnosis of his ADD. Fine. I accept that. I can't change it.
- I have huge respect for him, regardless of his quirks. He is loving. He is loyal. He is good to me, to his children and his wider family. He is hard working. He won't ever let us down. He's a good man and the centre of my life.
- I try now, extremely hard I might add, to not take his outbursts personally. He's going to always talk over me at times, to be annoyed when I disagree with him or express my own views that are contrary to his. He is not going to respond well when he feels overwhelmed or when I express upset, even if that's the slightest change in tone of voice. It's hard for him to contain his emotional state, and since he is more or less forced to do that out in the world, I get that he will emote at home. I might say, 'Why are you shouting at me?' to try to get him to self-correct and to lower his voice, but I've learned to keep a very tight lid on my own emotional state and to take less and less time to get over my internal upset privately.
- After wads of reading on the topic I came to see that it is vital not to tap into such a person's sense of shame or of feeling overwhelmed. People with ADD have weathered many storms of being put down by others in their lives - parents, teachers and spouses all play into this sense of shame. With their high expectations of themselves, and their quirks of nature which make some issues of life difficult, your criticisms of their efforts will be overwhelming for them. They will be hurt and feel misunderstood. It will help nothing and nobody.
- The following strategies are very important: Don't engage in important or difficult conversations late at night. If you need to talk about something important or something you want to achieve that involves their input or decision making, have a face to face conversation at the most opportune time, no distractions or preoccupations. Don't talk about past mistakes. Don't make them feel guilty. Just ask for their assistance to make whatever it is you want or need happen. Be upbeat, co-operative, kind and positive.
In the midst of my husband's illness I read a long paper by a specialist in chronic fatigue. Sorry, right now all I remember is that her first name was Sarah and she lives in the UK. She's treated hundreds of people over decades and the pattern she has identified was that all her patients were Type A. Whether you or your loved one has undiagnosed ADD or not, a consideration of Type A characteristics (and possible anxiety resulting from this personality type), and what that may mean to your health and emotional state isn't a bad place to start your re-evaluation of how you live your life and whether this is making for your chronic fatigue state. I wish you the very best.
